Judy Collins @ The Egg, 11/21/08

ALBANY – Judy Collins has been making annual visits to the Capital Region for nearly a decade – performing Christmas concerts with Albany Pro Musica at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. And last year, she also performed at the inauguration of Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

But when she sang at The Egg on Friday night, there was no chorus, no holiday repertoire and no mention of the former governor. It was just Judy Collins, pianist Russell Walden and a batch of wonderful songs that she’s accumulated over the course of her nearly 50-year musical career.

Ironically, she seemed a bit unfocused.

Accompanied by Walden on piano and her own 12-string guitar playing, the 69-year-old singer opened with Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning” and had the crowd singing along with her by the second song, a John Denver medley of “Leavin’ On a Jet Plane” and “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

She rejoiced about the recent presidential election, proclaiming, “The ‘60s are coming back – only better.” And she offered a brief autobiographical journey that included a cappella snippets of songs from “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” to “Bottle of Wine” to a trio of selections from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific,” although she credited it to Rodgers and Hart. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” started out the same way, but Walden – and the audience – eventually joined in, and Collins sang the whole song. She sang only three lines from Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” – one of her best known interpretations – but got the lyrics wrong.

She finally hit her stride with a marvelous pair of a cappella songs – Shel Silverstein’s haunting “Hills of Shiloh” and the traditional “John Riley” – which led into a glorious reading of Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where the Time Goes.”

Collins has always had a magnificent voice and an unerring knack for interpretation, but she offered Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” as a saloon blues. And let’s just say that Collins has never been known as a blues singer.

Her heart was in the right place with her own “Kingdom Come,” a tribute to the firefighters of 9/11, but the song didn’t quite measure up. And by the time she served up the Beatles’ “Blackbird” and Jimmy Webb’s “Gauguin,” her voice seemed to be tired and fraying around the edges – what the “American Idol” judges like to describe as “pitchy.”

After an intermission, she sat at the grand piano, accompanying herself on a quartet of original songs (the wistful “My Father,” “Since You Asked,” “Albatross” and “The Blizzard”), but her voice wasn’t quite up to the task. She sounded strong again when Walden took over the piano for the show-closing “Both Sides Now,” but the encore of Webb’s “No Signs of Age” once again revealed the shortcomings in her voice on Friday night.

And that was it, just a 28-minute second set. She never got around to singing most of her signature songs – “Suzanne,” “Send in the Clowns” or even “Amazing Grace.” Perhaps she was feeling ill or simply tired, but Collins couldn’t live up to her past glories.

Greg Haymes may be reached at 454-5742 or by e-mail at ghaymes@timesunion.com.

Music review
JUDY COLLINS
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: The Egg, Empire State Plaza, Albany
Musical highlights: The a cappella “Hills of Shiloh” and the mesmerizing “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”
Length: First set – 1 hour; second set – 28 minutes
The crowd: An appreciative crowd filled about 2/3 of the seats of the Hart Theater.